on slavery served as the capstone to a career devoted to getting the big things right. His genius was his judgment. Unlike Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell before him, and Napoleon, Lenin, and Mao after him, he understood that the greater glory resided in posterity's judgment. If you aspire to live forever in the memory of future generations, you must demonstrate the ultimate self-confidence to leave the final judgment to them. And he did. Washington's task was to change the improbable into the inevitable. Reviews The historian Gordon S. Wood, who has also written about the Revolutionary and federalist periods, wrote in his review in The New Republic that "Ellis's portrait of Washington thus humanizes the man without knocking him off the pedestal where his contemporaries placed him. This Washington is all the greater because he is a real human being with both passions and principles." He also wrote, "Joseph J. Ellis ... has been a one-man historical machine... Ellis has entered the ranks of that tiny group of popular historians, including David McCullough, Walter Isaacson, and Ron Chernow, who sell copies of their books in the tens and even hundreds of thousands." References External links Steve Inskeep, "New Book Takes Fresh Look at George Washington", Morning Edition, NPR, 25 October 2004 Jonathan Yardley, Review: "'His Excellency, George Washington'", The Washington Post, 28 October 2004 His Excellency, George Washington, collected reviews and quotes, Powell's Books 2004 non-fiction books Alfred A. Knopf books Books about George Washington